Ganden Sumtseling Monastery

The Ganden Somtseling Monastery, also known as Somtseling and Guihuasi (Wylie: dga' ldan sum rtsen gling, THL: ganden somtseling, pinyin: Sōngzànlín Sì), is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery situated 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the city of Shangri-La at elevation 3,380 metres (11, 090 ft) in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan. Built in 1679, the monastery is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Diqing and is sometimes referred to as the Little Potala Palace. During the 9th century, high demand for trade goods on the path to Lhasa brought Naxi administrators, Han merchants, and Bai metalsmiths into permanent settlement in what is now modern-day Diqing. This transformed the town into a linguistic and cultural buffer zone where minority groups acted as economic intermediaries between the low valleys of Yunnan and the high Tibetan plateau. The Fifth Dalai Lama established the monastery in Zhongdian, in 1679, under the Gelukpa order of Tibetan Buddhism. It was extensively damaged during the Cultural Revolution and subsequently rebuilt in 1983. In its rebuilt structures, it currently accommodates 700 monks in 200 associated houses.

Monastery data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).